Hajji’s Treasure Given 10% Chance to Survive

BALTIMORE —  Although Hajji’s Treasure had won the California Derby at Golden Gate Fields on April 20, the $9,200 yearling purchase was given little chance to win Saturday’s Preakness Stakes at Pimlico and went off at 24-1 odds.

Still, jockey Joe Judice liked the way Hajji’s Treasure was running out of the first turn. The colt was third behind Eternal Prince and Sport Jet.

But when Hajji’s Treasure switched leads, his left front leg gave way. Then he switched his weight to his right side, and the right front leg started caving in, too.

“I don’t know how he stood up,” Judice said later, still in tears even though he had showered in the jockeys’ room and changed into street clothes. Judice pulled up Hajji’s Treasure, the dream of his owner and trainer to win a Preakness now a nightmare, and in a matter of 10 minutes or so, the horse was on a van that took him on a two-hour ride to the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center.

With both sesamoids broken in his right front leg, Hajji’s Treasure was given only a 10% chance to survive by a track veterinarian. However, a spokesman for New Bolton late Saturday night would only say that the prognosis on the horse is guarded and that an attempt would be made by a team of surgeons to fuse the fetlock joint.

Like Judice, owner Stan Hodge was also crying as he got into his car in a Pimlico parking lot about an hour after Hajji’s Treasure had left the track. Wayne Lukas, who had saddled Tank’s Prospect to win the Preakness, rushed to console Hodge.

“Don’t let this get you,” Lukas said. “This is racing, and there’ll be other days.” No one knows better than Lukas, who saw Landaluce, a champion 2-year-old filly, die of a viral infection at Santa Anita in November 1982.

“I thought this horse had a real great future,” Judice said of Hajji’s Treasure. “I guess this is what they mean by the agony of defeat.”